Ming Dynasty and New Rome and Infinite Magic Machine

Chapter 1696 Bread
"That really is... um." Zhu Xianxi shook his head.

The habits of eating staple foods differ between the East and the West. Rice, for example, can simply be boiled in water.

If wheat is the staple food, then while one would still need to deal with millers, bakers would be largely unnecessary. This is because if one wanted to make steamed buns, one could do so at home; steaming wheat-based foods in a bamboo steamer is highly efficient—which raises the issue of bamboo steamers, since bamboo isn't readily available everywhere in the world.

“This is actually a topic worth studying,” Zhu Xianxi pondered. “Comparative studies of food culture can show how dietary structure affects social structure. I think many people in the Imperial College would be interested in this.”

The astute Zhu Xianxi recognized its academic value. However, its practical significance could also help the imperial court solve many problems.

“That’s a good thing,” Zhu Xianxi nodded. “Because conscripting laborers requires providing food, and if we rebuild the supply lines for 200 million people, it will be a huge administrative expense. If Rome itself has such subsidies, then we can just transfer them to the construction site.”

"However, senior brother, the fact that there are too many people signing up is a problem."

The Romans were offering free bread, which was a good thing, and Zhu Xianxi was very pleased.

But the free bread has created too many idle people, which Zhu Xianxi finds difficult to manage.

"How about this for now?" Zhu Xianxi suggested. "It's not realistic to expect all 200 million people to submit their resumes. Let's ask who has a driver's license and who can operate an excavator; those will be our top priority. Then, those who are literate will be next. And those who can't do anything will be considered last."

"Senior, I've done the statistics on this. The situation is very worrying. There are very few people among these people who can operate construction machinery like excavators, and very few who are literate. I think this might affect the work efficiency on the construction site. When we issue a regulation, I'm afraid five or six out of ten people won't be able to understand it."

"Then let's open a class for them and teach them to read and write. We can also teach them to drive and operate an excavator. We'll recruit those who already know how to drive and let them teach those who don't."

The harsh rule of China over Egypt was about to begin. The first thing they did was invest in a dam that would guarantee a good harvest regardless of drought or flood. The second thing they did was to establish literacy schools and industrial schools while the dam was being built.

Are you here to alleviate poverty or what? You're trying to do both physical and emotional support at the same time.

"That's why the imperial court is very cautious about expanding its territory," Zhu Xianxi replied. "Every place we conquer requires governance. In the years following the Chongzhen reign, in addition to the comprehensive governance of the two capitals and thirteen provinces, we also covered places like Annam and Korea."

In other words, apart from the Begonia, the only areas that the imperial court actually expanded into as its core territory were the annexed Joseon and Annam after its fall. These two places were not entirely foreign territories, as they both had prefectures and counties established within them for a considerable period of time.

"In any case, that's settled." Zhu Xianxi made the decision, but then he remembered something else—his desire to do research began to stir.

We were just talking about conducting comparative studies on dietary structures, but that can wait. Right now, there's a plan that can be implemented immediately.

"Shangluo, let me ask you a question—ancient Egyptian writing was actually ideographic, right?"

"Yes, you could say that. If our writing system is 'ideographic,' then Egyptian hieroglyphs are also ideographic to that extent."

Ideographic writing is a general term. There are actually six methods of character formation: pictographic, ideographic, associative compound, phonetic-semantic compound, derivative, and phonetic loan, collectively known as the Six Scripts. Some components initially had other meanings. For example, the character 寺 (temple) in oracle bone script is a combination of two semantic components: 【走】 (walking) and 【手】 (hand), meaning to carry something while walking, and by extension, to serve, govern, or carry something while walking.

Therefore, the name Dali Temple and Guanglu Temple uses the classical meaning of "temple" to refer to something very classical, which is consistent with the meaning in oracle bone script.

Later, in order to distinguish between the meanings of "governing" and "carrying something," the latter was distinguished as "holding," and the radical for "hand" was added to indicate that it was related to the hand. This was still a development based on the original meaning of the character "寺" (temple).

However, later characters like 【诗】 (shī, poetry) completely used the character 【寺】 (sì, temple) as a phonetic component. This is because in the early stages of Chinese language development—or in the early stages of many languages—phonetics precedes vocabulary. Once the pronunciation of a concept becomes conventional, it becomes necessary to find a corresponding character for it.

Egyptian ideographic writing followed a similar developmental trajectory. Initially, it was strictly ideographic, but as time progressed, phonetic symbols increased. The final form of Egyptian writing comprised three scripts.

The first is hieroglyphics, used for stone inscriptions, which more strictly preserves the ideographic parts of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The second is the hieroglyphic script. The monks were civil servants in ancient Egypt and had a lot of scribe work, so it is a "cursive" script of hieroglyphics - not only is the form messy, but the meaning also begins to be messy.

By the time the third secular script, and even the current Coptic alphabet, the ideographic parts were completely gone, leaving only fragmented symbols dismantled from hieroglyphics.

If we use Chinese characters as an analogy, the first script is more similar to seal script, retaining a writing style that is not too far removed from antiquity, but it is already quite far from the truly ancient script.

The second type, similar to clerical script, was also a new script that emerged from extensive writing work. It was the result of "standardizing" ancient characters.

However, the third type is simply a phonetic symbol like Hangul or Kana, and is not Chinese characters at all.

"However, despite this, the Coptic language still retains many parts of the ancient Egyptian script."

For example, the Coptic word for cow is written as [ ], which is the simplified form of the ancient Egyptian word for "cow," showing the cow's head and horns. In the Phoenician alphabet, it became [ ], still showing the horns. In the Latin alphabet, it became A, representing a cow with its neck twisted.

“Then Shangluo,” Zhu Xianxi suddenly suggested, “look, since ancient Egyptian writing has a lot of ideographic parts, and our writing also has a lot of ideographic parts, and they need to carry out literacy education there—why not just teach them Chinese characters directly?”

"Huh? But they don't speak Chinese."

"Of course, Chinese characters can also be used to represent other languages—Japanese, which has nothing to do with ideographic writing, can be represented by Chinese characters. Egyptian, which is based on ideographic writing, can certainly be represented directly by Chinese characters. To represent a cow, right? Then you can just write it as a cow, you see, it even has horns. Let's teach it this way, and I'll see how it goes first."

"Senior brother, are you planning something big?" Shang Luo realized that Zhu Xianxi seemed to be planning something big.

"Unifying writing and writing across the land—cough, although this source is somewhat of a misinterpretation, it was said by Wanyan Liang, but I don't think there's anything wrong with unifying writing. After all, since their writing is only used for phonetics, changing the symbols doesn't matter, right? Look at how Korean or Japanese are; they speak the same way they always have. It's just that when writing, we don't use their meaningless phonetic symbols, but instead use meaningful Chinese characters. I'm doing a good deed, making up for all the lessons they've missed in one go."

(End of this chapter)